Most of you that know me well understand I spend a shitload of time in Second Life, the Virtual World. I am a staff member of one of the largest, premiere simulators in Second Life, known as Insilico. I take a great deal of pride in my developments in Second Life, and I often find it inspiring to reflect on how it's helped me grow to understand the nature of the new "community."
Insilico is primarily a role-playing simulator. We allow players to come, join the group's social network on Ning.com, and create their own character to join in the joint story-writing adventure that is role-playing. It's one hell of a good time. My specific job as role-play Host is to promote a sense of cohesion. I judge player disputes, answer role-playing related questions, help players define backstory that's compatible with the established rules of Insilico and generally try to be a sort of oracle for rp. Roleplaying works best when players work together, and sometimes it takes a dedicated overseer to get the job done.
What needs overseeing, you ask? Maybe you don't. If so, stop reading.
When two players have a scene together and begin to establish truths in a spongy reality, important keyframes in history are placed onto a hidden global timeline. Now assume two other characters are plotting something that contradicts or overlaps a truth in the other character's story. More keyframes, none get resolved until they meet though. Now pretend a new player assumes a role high up in a faction's hierarchy. Do you let him play as the boss of a large group of people who already operate leaderless? What if he assert's he's related to another player? Or perhaps pretends to have spoken to them? And finally we have a lone furry, the evershunned, who has to be told that Insilico does not allow furry roleplayers, but they're more than welcome to shop the mall.
My job is to sit in the middle of all that, fingers firmly in the ether, reading and anticipating, smoothing and weaving as gently as I can. It's incredibly fun to watch the stories unfold from the eye of the hurricane. But this is only half the story. This is just the written word, the agreed upon stories and plots. Is this a game?
The game comes into play the same way it does in Dungeons and Dragons for us in Insilico. When a conflict cannot be settled by merely talking it out, or an element of skill/chance needs to be involved to complete a certain objective, or gain a certain item...basically cross any conflict, that's when we use the game. The game typically means the DCS combat system, a special game system that sits inside Second Life and allows players to use weapons like guns and swords, as well as activate powers and skills. It's universal: Any sim owners can choose to have their Sim run that software, and theme it all for their sim. It keeps leaderboards, emotes...the works. We use it to play fight, usually in large group situations or just for fun. But does it ever really solve disputes? Not really. DCS can't be used to solve disputes very effectively, because no real judging goes on in mortal combat, and the party better at playing video games will always prevail, which has nothing to do with reason.
Oh shit, I've devolved into the nature of human conflict resolution using Second Life role-playing as my lead in. Let's see where this goes.
Humans have felt an increasing need to settle conflicts with words throughout our history. Once it was discovered that reading and writing were of value, thanks to the strategic and tactical advantage it gave the leaders of communities, people have wanted to make sure they don't get fucked over by the bigger guy. Makes sense, smart people who can prove their innocence or merit (circumstantially, of course) should get a proper chance. Fast forwards to Insilico. It's a world populated by people who have one major flaw: they need to be able to manipulate a world that relies on sending information over fiber optic cables with amazing precision and patience, in order to move at all. Much less fight. Second Life is slow compared to most MMOs due to its streaming nature, and generally high specs. It can run very well, don't get me wrong. Most of the time it runs like a dream, but it also has some major lag issues and yadda yadda it's not as fast or as intuitive as an interfaced designed to play a game. If you're not good at video games, you're not going to win fights in Second Life.
So to wrap that thought into it all: Even a virtual system of combat, one that in theory puts all players on the same level (due to the uniform nature of the program code), you cannot use combat to settle disputes without pissing off smart people. Big "duh" moment, right? Bears mentioning though. Second Life, having no dedicated rule system to govern, allows its users to govern themselves. Lord of the Flies situation, but instead of isolation there's a constant shifting/shuffling of "home" sims and players. Does this mad mix allow the self-governed system to work by promoting the idea of longevity = authority?
*takes a deep breath*
That's enough for now on that. Back to the game at hand.
As a game, Second Life functions great. It's an MMO with no levels, no grinding. A "free" fps (Second Life isn't free, you have to spend a little time or money in here to really get a foothold and start feeling true "ownership" of your virtual footprint. Free online communities are largely empty space.). Second Life players allow other players to judge them. GMs make decisions to ban people from the simulator, or to hire on new staff. The staff are volunteers, players themselves with a penchant for giving back. It's conflict with rules to decide a winner. Cept the game never ends, and people have to play fair.
The rules are amazingly strict in most role-playing settings, but at the same time allow for an equally or even doubly amazing breath of role play. We don't allow flying, but we do allow cloning. We don't allow ears and tails, but we do allow robotic shapes and sizes of almost any kind. We draw lines at certain limits: Almost no Nanomachines are allowed in Insilico, no teleportation, no interstellar travel farther than Mars, no aliens. Sometimes there's conflict when a player starts fresh and decides to open with their alien lineage, or strap on their jet pack and fly away conveniently at the slightest provocation. In comes a GM, me or my partner Ysanne Korpov (German girl, my EU RP Host counterpart) to lay down the fuckin' law. And people listen, or they leave. Sounds harsh? Over a thousand members on our Ning. There needs to be balance, and since we cannot use a truly martial system to judge, there has to be judges.
So I play this game, and I judge this game. Second Life has potential to evolve into something wholly other: a system that as it evolves the ability to handle user generated content could create some truly amazing. I hope to be there when the internet and technology catch up to the creativity of the residents in Insilico and all of SL. It's truly a building block, and a playground, for minds and games of all kinds.
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Some of my digital art
8 years ago
